Civil Rights Litigation

Catalog description

The class will provide a thorough overview of the rules and doctrines governing civil rights enforcement and litigation. While maintaining an in-depth approach to the substantive legal concepts, the course will ultimately be organized around the ideas most central to bringing, or defending, civil rights claims in court. 42 U.S.C. section 1983 claims, and the procedural issues around them, will be analyzed in-depth but not exclusively. The course will deal with substantive rights but the focus will be on the enforcement mechanisms, and procedural hurdles, used to bring or defend claims regardless of the rights involved. In addition, there will be discussion of civil rights issues in a broader context, including (1) the power and limitation of litigation and the courts generally; (2) the social and historical context in which the covered doctrines developed; and (3) the place of litigation in larger efforts to build movements and change. The coursework will predominantly cover rights and remedies in the context of individual, civil claims as opposed to federal agencies' claims or criminal defenses. Classwork will proceed based on case and text readings as well as model problems. Graded. Prerequisites: None.